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Can Windows, OS X and Fedora All Work Together?
greymond writes "In my ever growing job responsibilities, I've recently been tasked with documenting our organization's IT infrastructure, primarily focusing on cost analysis of our hardware leases and software purchases. This is something that has never been done in our organization before and while it's moving along slowly, I'm already seeing some places where we could make improvements. Once completed, I see this as an opportunity to bring up the topic of migrating the majority of our office from Windows 7 to Linux and from Exchange to Gmail. However, this would result in three departments each running a different system: Windows, OS X, and most likely Fedora. Has anyone worked in or tried to set up an environment like this? What roadblocks did you run into? Is this really feasible or should I just continue to focus on the cutbacks that don't require OS changes? (The requirement for having three different systems is that the vast majority of our administration, who rely solely on an install of Microsoft Windows, Word and Excel, are savvy enough that if they came in and saw Gnome running on Fedora with Open Office they'd pick it up fast. However, our marketing department is composed entirely of Apple systems, and the latest Adobe Creative Suite doesn't seem to all work under Wine. The biggest issue is with the Sales department though, as they rely on a proprietary sales platform that is Windows only — and generally, sales personal give the biggest push back when it comes to organizational changes.)"
i recently hired an IT staff that outsources their job responsibilities to online chat message boards. has anyone else had experience in replacing such a staff?
Something I've learned as an old IT guy is that employee comfort is very under-rated. How comfortable an employee is with their work space is critical to productivity. I'm talking everything from the chair they sit in to what's on their monitor. If they're comfortable with windows and office and become uncomfortable with gmail and open office then you'll just kill productivity and whatever money you saved will be meaningless.
Post pictures of your girlfriend, and we'll tell you if you should propose. Give a snapshot of your kitchen, and we'll make redecorating suggestions. Post your eTrade login and password, I'll take a shot at helping you revise your portfolio. Thinking of buying a house?
We know nothing about your company, what it does, what the people are like. We have no fucking clue what you should do, because every situation is different. If there is one decent bit of advice to be had, and this comes from the Veep level with 20 years in:
1. Everything starts with the directory system and
2. Calendaring derives from it.
He also needs to get some Java, C#, C++, SQL, Oracle, SQL Server, Perl, VBA, .NET, Visual Studio, and iPhone coding under his belt too or otherwise he'll be unemployable.
Kids - be ruthless in building your skills laundry list because employers want you to have it all and you're competing with people from all over the World who'll work for much less than you will. Also, make sure you're in management by 35 or you'll be working at Starbucks - if you're lucky.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Because exchange will continue to cost you money. Just because you sunk money into the initial purchase of exchange doesn't mean you're done spending money on it. A mail server in general will cost you a lot of man hours just dealing with spam alone. Many setups I've seen have another blade that does nothing but handle spam. So now you have to pay someone to maintain two boxes and pay a subscription fee for your spam filter. Lets not forget the price of deploying and maintaining Outlook either. Nothing but a constant PITA maintenance drain. We used to play that game. Life is easy with Gmail.
I'll take it one step futher - why get rid of Windows 7? You already have licenses, probably already have some patch deployment method in place, and your users are probably happy and familer with it. There is going to be a ZERO cost benefit of going from Windows to Linux because the company ALREADY HAS licenses. Now, if you are talking about bringing in future people, and in future computer purchaces, going open source, that is different.
All going from Windows to Linux is going to do is frustrate users, and going from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice is yet ANOTHER new Office product they have to use. You will have to incure a cost of training users, and suffer from a temporary loss in productivity while the users learn the new system. In other words, converting from Windows 7 to Linux will probably ADD costs, not save them. On top of that, you would have to incure the costs of reimaging your entire Windows user base, and backing up user data, then porting it over to Linux.
I say, stick with Exchange - your department has already sunk money into it, and leave your Windows users alone. Your solutions are going to COSTS money, not save it.
That's just, like, your opinion, man.
I despise the ribbon. Why? Because I'd rather spend my time doing work or commenting on slashdot instead of learning a new UI when the old one is in my fucking muscle memory.
I despise using a mouse when keyboard shortcuts work well... and the ribbon killed many, many keyboard shortcuts.
Here's the thing about the ribbon: for beginners, it's easier from the get-go. For intermediate users, it's worth the switch. For expert users of the menu-driven old UI? Not worth it... those users will never be faster and more productive with the ribbon then they were under the old UI. Any time spent learning the ribbon UI is time that is 100% wasted.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
GMail was more expensive over 5 years than Exchange was, so we kept with Exchange (2010, in our case). Our spam filter is quite effective, and barely needs to be touched. Exchange 2003 was extremely hands off, and now having implemented 2010 I don't see how it's going to be any different. It works well with Windows and OS X via Office 2010/2011, and the Linux users (Ubuntu, Debian) are all content with Outlook 2010 via Citrix XenApp. As for pushing Linux on people; right tool for the right job. Trying to get CS to run in WINE is borderline incompetent if you're using it for business to facilitate the money-making process. Sure, it may be good fun at home, but there's no place for that shit in a business. Windows does the general office crap fine, so we use it. Linux does the engineering/compute stuff fine, which is why we use it. OS X does the marketing/sales/creative crap just great, so we use it. They all integrate into Active Directory easily, so I don't see why giving employees choice is a problem, provided you have a competent IT staff.